Free speech is vital for democratic and republican societies to thrive. Trying to stop people we disagree with by the use of violence only comes back to haunt us later on when our own views are opposed by others. Every religion known to man has been misused by extreme believers to silence dissent, and the best of political and moral beli…
Free speech is vital for democratic and republican societies to thrive. Trying to stop people we disagree with by the use of violence only comes back to haunt us later on when our own views are opposed by others. Every religion known to man has been misused by extreme believers to silence dissent, and the best of political and moral beliefs can be misused as well, with the true believers convincing themselves that their violent acts are on behalf of a greater good.
Religion is the opiate of the masses, the rituals that bind a group to submit mindlessly to the rules of a theocracy of one sort or another. But not all religions are identical. Not all religions destroy. Some are wicked and some are not. The religion of Moloch demanded burning children alive, Aztecs cut out hearts, Hamas rapes women to death and runs a war machine beneath the beds of sleeping children who they hope will die as martyrs. Catholicism requires we help the poor before the wealthy, recognize that God loves those we hate, and admonishes us create beauty and be kind to our enemies to glorify God. You tell me which is a better religion.
Thank you for taking the time to reply to my comment. I have a coupe of thoughts on what you say. One is that you make a comparison between religions from ancient societies with modern ones. I think there are so many other social and cultural variables involved over the long course of history that your comparison is not particularly helpful or useful. And in using the modern Catholic Church in this part of your argument you leave out past times when that church supported horrific violence against heretics or non-believers as well.
The second is that comparing Hamas to modern Catholicism as though they were overall truths about modern Islam and Catholicism blurs large differences in how actual believers live out their religious beliefs today. You can easily find modern believers in Islam who are as loving and kind as the best modern believers in Catholicism, I think. What are your thoughts about my reactions?
Thank you! Nice rebuttal. My only point is all religions are not equivalent. Some are indeed better than others. We often use "cult" to degrade a religion but in fact they are all cults. I am a Catholic Jew and a theologian. I have been a member of many variants of Christianity and even dabbled in Buddhism for a bit. What I now conclude is God has no name we can know. The Jews are right to call him Hashem, His Name. So we do not kill each other over God. I even have a Wikipedia entry on Pseudo-Religions. God is not religion nor is religion ever an accurate rendition of how God would want us to worship God. But religions can certainly be evaluated by how they evolve and what good or evil they have brought to the world. Contemporary Catholicism is vastly better than the depravity of the Hamas variant of Islam. Hamas is evil. God is God.
Free speech is vital for democratic and republican societies to thrive. Trying to stop people we disagree with by the use of violence only comes back to haunt us later on when our own views are opposed by others. Every religion known to man has been misused by extreme believers to silence dissent, and the best of political and moral beliefs can be misused as well, with the true believers convincing themselves that their violent acts are on behalf of a greater good.
Religion is the opiate of the masses, the rituals that bind a group to submit mindlessly to the rules of a theocracy of one sort or another. But not all religions are identical. Not all religions destroy. Some are wicked and some are not. The religion of Moloch demanded burning children alive, Aztecs cut out hearts, Hamas rapes women to death and runs a war machine beneath the beds of sleeping children who they hope will die as martyrs. Catholicism requires we help the poor before the wealthy, recognize that God loves those we hate, and admonishes us create beauty and be kind to our enemies to glorify God. You tell me which is a better religion.
Thank you for taking the time to reply to my comment. I have a coupe of thoughts on what you say. One is that you make a comparison between religions from ancient societies with modern ones. I think there are so many other social and cultural variables involved over the long course of history that your comparison is not particularly helpful or useful. And in using the modern Catholic Church in this part of your argument you leave out past times when that church supported horrific violence against heretics or non-believers as well.
The second is that comparing Hamas to modern Catholicism as though they were overall truths about modern Islam and Catholicism blurs large differences in how actual believers live out their religious beliefs today. You can easily find modern believers in Islam who are as loving and kind as the best modern believers in Catholicism, I think. What are your thoughts about my reactions?
Thank you! Nice rebuttal. My only point is all religions are not equivalent. Some are indeed better than others. We often use "cult" to degrade a religion but in fact they are all cults. I am a Catholic Jew and a theologian. I have been a member of many variants of Christianity and even dabbled in Buddhism for a bit. What I now conclude is God has no name we can know. The Jews are right to call him Hashem, His Name. So we do not kill each other over God. I even have a Wikipedia entry on Pseudo-Religions. God is not religion nor is religion ever an accurate rendition of how God would want us to worship God. But religions can certainly be evaluated by how they evolve and what good or evil they have brought to the world. Contemporary Catholicism is vastly better than the depravity of the Hamas variant of Islam. Hamas is evil. God is God.
Thank you for that clarification.